[HN Gopher] True Crime: Allan Pinkerton's Thirty Years a Detecti...
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       True Crime: Allan Pinkerton's Thirty Years a Detective (1884)
        
       Author : samclemens
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2024-12-08 23:24 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
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       | jmyeet wrote:
       | The Pinkertons are a fascinating period of history. "Detective
       | agency" in the modern parlance doesn't really fit. They were a
       | private army for the wealthy that at one time was larger than the
       | US army.
       | 
       | One particularly famous incident (after the founder's death) was
       | the Homestead strike [1]. Strike-breaking was very much in the
       | Pinkerton's wheelhouse and it's a good example of what they were
       | actually used for [2].
       | 
       | There doesn't seem to be a lot of fiction that features the
       | Pinkertons prominently. One exception is the (excellent) HBO TV
       | series _Deadwood_.
       | 
       | It's particularly apropos at this time because the lawless
       | violence and organized labor suppression of the robber barons in
       | the Pinkerton era is very much the future we are careening
       | towards.
       | 
       | [1]:
       | https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegi...
       | 
       | [2]: https://allthatsinteresting.com/pinkerton-detective-agency
        
         | ZeroGravitas wrote:
         | Dashiell Hammett was a Pinkerton before getting Spanish Flu and
         | becoming ill and switching to writing fiction to make money.
        
         | jhbadger wrote:
         | >There doesn't seem to be a lot of fiction that features the
         | Pinkertons prominently. One exception is the (excellent) HBO TV
         | series Deadwood
         | 
         | There's also _The Tall Target_ , a 1951 movie that sometimes
         | gets played on classic movie channels, which is about the
         | "Baltimore Plot" in which Abraham Lincoln was supposedly going
         | to be assassinated on his way to his first inauguration in
         | 1861. Supposedly it was prevented by the Pinkertons, although
         | historians question if any real plot was planned.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Plot
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tall_Target
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | > There doesn't seem to be a lot of fiction that features the
         | Pinkertons prominently.
         | 
         | There's a long Clive Cussler series about the "Van Dorn
         | Detective Agency", which is clearly the Pinkertons.[1] Willie
         | Sutton, the bank robber, wrote of the Pinkertons, "They were as
         | powerful as the cops, and much better organized."
         | 
         | Pinkerton, the company, is still around, but they haven't done
         | much detective work since the 1960s. Now they're mostly a
         | security guard service.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/isaac-bell/
        
         | martininmelb wrote:
         | The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle featured a
         | fictionalised version of a Pinkerton agent.
        
         | chrisco255 wrote:
         | Red Dead Redemption video game series features the Pinkertons:
         | 
         | https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Pinkerton_National_Detective...
        
         | siriaan wrote:
         | Not the Pinkertons, but John Sayle's Matewan from 1987 features
         | the Baldwin-Felts agency behaving similarly.
        
       | ZeroGravitas wrote:
       | > If you tell a farmer you're collecting signatures to cap the
       | salaries of government employees, and you're a smooth-talking
       | confidence man, the farmer will sign almost anything, even the
       | deed to his own land. This kind of swindle is called "the boodle
       | game".
        
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       (page generated 2024-12-09 23:00 UTC)